After the Bryant case, Hurlbert returned to his job. He would win two terms as district attorney, then leave to become the assistant DA in Arapahoe County, outside of Denver. The Bryant case and the Duke lacrosse case, in which athletes were falsely accused two years later, would be pivot points in how sexual assault cases are viewed in America. There was conversation about victim shaming and how to balance the rights of the accused. For a time, prosecutors seemed wary of indicting high-profile figures in such cases. Hurlbert traveled the state, giving postmortems of the Bryant case. At home, he says, he worked to improve the process for sexual assault victims. He modernized local procedures, hiring nurses trained in sexual assaults, and helped pass legislation to strengthen rape shield laws, making it harder for sexual history to be used against accusers — a pillar of Bryant’s defense. And he’s proud of his job of the past two years, as a vice president for eBodyGuard, a personal safety phone app.